Refining Data is Tough. Here’s How to Make it Easier

A recent survey of 200+ marketers from BlueVenn reveals a massive struggle with data analysis — marketers lack the knowledge and resources to bring together a comprehensive customer view. Curt Bloom, President of BlueVenn US, argues it is technology’s role to help marketers understand their audiences

We’ve heard a lot about how data is the new oil. That’s largely because it is not only valuable, but the lifeblood of the economy. There’s another reason why the analogy is apt though: like oil, data is often difficult and expensive to refine. Many companies are finding this out the hard way.

According to recent research we conducted, most marketers are caught in a conundrum. They realize that culling and synthesizing data is integral to taking a 360-degree single customer view. However, they also know that they’re over their heads when it comes to making sense of such data.

Mind the gap

In our recent poll of 200 US and UK marketing professionals, some 82% said that they didn’t have the knowledge or resources to bring together a truly comprehensive view of the customer. This schism between ideal and reality has prompted many marketers to give up on the single customer view, chalking it up to yet another marketing concept that’s great in theory but not applicable in the real world.

Digging deeper, we found that marketing departments often shy away from what they see as complex data analysis tasks.

It gets worse. Marketers in the survey said they spend up to 80% of their time analyzing and interpreting data, representing a huge opportunity cost. Though 99.5% of marketers said they are now attempting to parse consumer data, 1 in 5 say they don’t have the right tools to fully undertake this task.

About a third of marketers also spend more than half their time analyzing data. (One in 10 spend more than 80% of their time doing this.) Some 27% of marketers pass the data to the IT department, which creates a bottleneck and prevents the timely execution of marketing campaigns.

We aren’t the only ones to see this gap. A recent analysis by Dun & Bradstreet found that marketers thought that overall their data rated 3 out of 5 on the quality scale, meaning it was “questionable.” In the study, 41% of marketers cited “inconsistent data across technologies” as their biggest obstacle to marketing ROI.

It doesn’t have to be this way

Of course marketers are right that data is important. But they are wrong to assume that refining and extracting data should be a time- and resource-hogging activity. At this point, most marketers have realized that they can’t do it all and need solutions to handle the grunt work. By using tools to handle data analysis, marketers take an onerous task off the table, get access to better data and are free to pursue more creative applications of their craft.

Platforms that combine powerful analytics, integrated campaign management, modeling, reporting and email communications can help marketers to rid themselves of a task that had been tying up time and resources.

Navigating the Environment

The CMO’s job has grown infinitely more complex over the past few years as marketing came to encompass SEO, advertising, PR and graphic design. Technology is so pervasive that many marketers are expected to at least have some basic coding skills.

Data is at the center of this environment. Our research shows 72% of marketers now consider data analysis and management to be the most important skillset for their business to acquire over the next two years. With the advancements in big data, marketers have more opportunities than ever to understand their audiences, increase sales, and ultimately develop a more enjoyable customer experience.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, data analysis and managing that data is harder than most marketers thought it would be. Marketers are either spending massive amounts of time just analyzing data or relying heavily on IT, outsourced agencies and data analysis firms. Rather than shy away from complex data analysis tasks, marketers need to tackle their fear and understand that learning the right software and data analytics programs, in reality, is actually no harder than learning an email marketing tool or CRM platform.

The time has come when marketers need to take on a more agile approach. Using software solutions to automate data analysis is one way that marketers can keep their heads above water in this dynamic environment. For those that are currently drowning in data, it’s an option seriously worth considering.

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